


Hellgod Girl

by HeatedHeadwear (SplickedyHat)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Death, Demons, F/M, Humanstuck, Magic, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 10:05:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3063863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SplickedyHat/pseuds/HeatedHeadwear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before this story began, a part-time demon hunter named Feferi Peixes summoned Rozalon, Demon of Vengeance because she wanted to see if she could.  In exchange for a book from Feferi's shelves, Rozalon would, in the case of her client being murdered, hunt down her killer and bring them to justice.<br/>Not that Feferi was expecting to be killed, but she was.  And that's when this story starts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hellgod Girl

**Author's Note:**

> As blackroms go, this is pretty lukewarm. It's also the kind of story my oneshots tend to be--miserable character in denial must face themselves and the things they've done. I've already put Eridan through this general narrative once, but I was too interested in the idea of Rose Lalonde the demonic instrument of retribution to stop myself. I'm not entirely sure this counts as EriRose, even though that was my intended pairing when I started. Really you can read it as a pairing or as a snarky frenemyship, to be honest.

Rozalon moves through the wet, tentacle-filled darkness of the Beyond, marinating in her boredom.

The Beyond is what most people would traditionally refer to as the Underworld, but what those people fail to understand is that this particular level of reality isn’t greatly removed from theirs in any single direction.  It’s just...Beyond.

The bright, colorful tags of her contracts trail dreamily through the void above her head, tiny points of rainbow light in the indomitable darkness.  Not one of them has required her to act for a while now; she might terminate a few from her end if this continues.  They’ll vanish on their own when the contractors in question die (except for a few...special ones), but if you haven’t needed the services of the demon you summoned in the  _fifty years_ since you summoned said demon, then really what is the damn point?

Traditionally, demons accept souls as payment for services rendered, but Rozalon is satisfied just to accept a good book and a little time spent in the “human realm”--a stupid name, as though humans are the only beings in it.  Still, her abiding interest in their books and legends has led her to their dimension, unsummoned, more than once.  Not to mention the sounds that come out of the pliant, crescent-shaped holes in their faces.

But it’s so much easier when guided by the call of a customer, which is why--after about another glutinous black year (or maybe a minute)--she’s mildly pleased when the fuschia tag hanging to her right makes a sweet chiming noise and flares like a red-purple star.  Tendrils of slimy blackness slide away from the light, and chittering sounds from beaks you would never find on any self-respecting bird fill the empty corners of the Beyond.

 **Don’t be so dramatic,** Rozalon murmurs in a voice like a gothic choir in a hell-canyon.  She reaches out one storm-gray hand and grips the fuschia tag.  There’s a moment of perfect stillness, and then the balance tips and the Beyond shifts through the next layer of reality like sand through a sieve.  And then another, and then another, each sinking through the next--or perhaps the next rising through the first, until, finally, the final grain spills away and Rozalon is standing in dull orange light.

She’s been to this city at least once before, of course, but she only saw the inside of her client’s house.  Now she’s outside in the open--if somewhat greasy--air.  Seasons are small, inconsequential things to someone with her perspective on the passage of human time, so while the season must surely be indicated by the heat of the air, she can’t quite recall the word for it.

The human standing next to her is sweating.  It seems to be male, somewhere between what they call boys and what they call men.  His face is narrow, his eyes dark and shadowed under his square black glasses, and upon studying him, Rozalon spots the faint halo of fuschia light that marks him as her client’s killer.  The name comes to her mind easily, as though she knew it all along and had simply forgotten.

All that remains now is to...explain the situation to him.

She has something of a rule when it comes to revealing herself to prospective victims: announce yourself in private.  It’s easier to have the first conversation when the human you’re addressing isn’t worried about the public eye.

That said, it’s not  _much_ easier.  Even in a world where magic and minor demons are common spectacles, being confronted by a resident of the Beyond seems invariably to induce speechlessness--or worse, terrified gibbering--in those she visits uninvited.  Such people are poor listeners.

But there’s no reason not to hint at her presence, so she sends aches and chills crawling up the human’s spine as she floats at his shoulder in the cramped space of the small, sweaty bus.  It’s mildly entertaining to watch him shiver and wipe his chilled face and glance uneasily around.   _Don’t worry, young murderer...you will soon know the source of your discomfort._

She drifts after him when he steps off the bus and stalks into the shadow of a towering, ancient apartment complex.  There’s a sign on the door that reads  _No Magic, No Parties, No Chalk on Walls or Floors._

The stairway leading to the second floor of the building is narrow in every sense of the word, enough so that the human seems more comfortable turned slightly to one side as he climbs them.  Rozalon, curious, allows gravity to affect her momentarily so that she’s walking on her feet.

The result is a terrifying and undignified moment of flailing and grabbing at railings, which causes the whole structure to creak and shake.  In the moment of silence that follows, the human looks around, unnerved, completely failing to see Rozalon.  Then, shivering again, he continues climbing.  Disgruntled but determined to do her job, she relaxes into her usual state of weightlessness and glides easily up, into a poorly-lit hallway, down its length to a window through which can be seen nothing but a brick wall, and through his apartment door.

And then, in the still, tense moment designated for a customary dramatic pause, he turns in her approximate direction and says, “Alright, who’s there?”

Oh.

So he’s familiar with her kind...no matter.  He’s prompted an introduction, and she’ll give him one.

 **My name is Rozalon, Demon of Vengeance,** she says, letting a cloak of barbed tentacles stream up behind her.  The lights in the room flicker violet and blood-red and fever-haze imaginings of other faces crawl across hers; beaks and feelers and eyes placed at random.  Screams and guttural chittering and the cold, slow damp of the void fill the air.

Overall, she thinks, the effect should have been quite daunting.  She’s had plenty of time to perfect it, after all.  But he just looks...angry, is probably the best word for it.  As she lets the shadowy apparitions fade, she notes that he’s holding a white stick in one hand and wonders where exactly he pulled it from.  It’s glowing, radiant white light crawling along its length and up his arm.

Some kind of faux-angelic ridiculousness.  Well, the worst it could do is give her some blisters, but there’s no reason to allow even that degree of injury.  She draws one of her own needles with a black-knuckled hand and flicks it casually.

The white wand explodes softly in his fingers, an anticlimactic, silent shattering.

 **None of that, Eridan Ampora,** she tells him, and watches his eyes swivel around the room.  She can hear them moving in their sockets--sharp, analytic movements.   _Snick snick snick._ And then they stop, and shut, and open again.  He lets them turn slowly to face her, body taut in that strange way that indicates readiness for a physical altercation.  

 **You killed my client,** she says, and to her private surprise he doesn’t seem particularly fazed by the sound of her voice.  Watching closely for any blood flush or muscle jump, she says,  **You killed Feferi Peixes.**

“Didn’t,  _demon_ ,” says Eridan the boy-man immediately, face creasing in an expression that Rozalon feels might accurately be described as a sneer.  If she knew or understood the word petulant, she would have readily added the descriptor to her analysis.

Rozalon rolls her eyes, then remembers the gesture won’t come across properly without pupils.  After a moment’s concentration, she opens the appropriately sized holes in the pearly whites of her eyes and tries again.

Now he actually does look unnerved.  “...Was that...are you...rollin’ your eyes at me?”

Rozalon lets her lips creep up in a human smile, pleased with the success of the emotional interaction.   **Yes.  Because I know you’re lying.  And I will plague your days and nights until you admit to your sins and express remorse.**

“Listen, we worked together, sure, we were friends, but you’ve got the wrong guy.  When she...when she died I was tryin’ to protect her from the fuckin’ netherwolf that was menacin’ our lives, alright?”

Knowing as she does beyond a doubt that he is the killer (client bonds are infallible), Rozalon feels the same slight pang of suspicion at way he says this.  Demons know  _belief_ , even if other emotions are troublesome to distinguish.  And Eridan Ampora believes what he’s saying...almost.

 **I can wait** , she assures him.   **The contract cannot be fooled; I know your crimes.  I know you are a murderer.**

He seems distinctly unimpressed by this announcement.  “Fine, whatever.  An’ I suppose you’re gonna watch me sleep, huh? Real spooky.”

Rather than answering, she lets himself fade from his vision.  She has no intention of doing anything so crass and obvious as standing over his bed; better by far is the slow waking in the dark, heart racing and hands trembling, with the sense of being watched.

There’s no opportunity for this, however, because Eridan hardly sleeps even without her intervention.  From her corner, Rozalon can hear his breathing, evenly paced but never as slow and deep as the respiration of a human at rest.  He hardly flinches when the clock by his bed rings a harsh, high-pitched call to waking.  He throws a sour glance in Rozalon’s general direction, but says nothing.  A short shower, a change of clothes, and a cup of dark, grainy coffee later, he strides out the door.

Eridan has a job.  Rozalon hazards a guess that even by the severely mundane standards of humans, it’s fairly inglamorous.  On her first day in his company, she watches him flush minor demons out of an infested house.  They’re greensprites, stubborn little creatures crouching in the corners like mold, and he works with methodical doggedness for payment that barely affords him dinner that day.

“They deducted some of it for ‘property damage’,” he tells her later, and she’s surprised less by his bitterness and much more by the fact that he’s talking to her.  Most of the sad, ill sinners she’s been summoned to follow just cringe and shudder and try to ignore her presence.

 **...Oh?** she says, involuntarily.  Really, she should have been silent, let him stew in it.  But it actually takes her by surprise, instigating that little questioning syllable.  It’s not the kind of sound a demon generally makes.

He doesn’t seem to notice, just continues his grumbling.  “An’ if you hadn’t destroyed my fuckin’ wand, I wouldn’t have burned their paint with the god-gun.  So it’s your fault I ain’t eatin’ a balanced, nutritious meal right now, alright?  When are you gonna  _stop followin’ me_?”

 **I owe you nothing except my client’s will,** Rozalon intones, spotting an opening to bring the conversation back to her actual purpose.  He makes that sneering face again, sour and doubting.

“Yeah, like Fef would make a contract with a damn horrorterror emissary.  That sounds a lot like her.”

Rose considers this.   **...There were at least ten books about the zoologically dubious on the shelves in her room.  Surely you knew that.**

“Well--maybe she did, but that don’t prove nothin’!  You keep talkin’ in that spooky fuckin’ voice a yours but all I’m hearin’ is a load a scientifically unproven one hundred percent  _bullshit_.  You’re makin’ it up.  You’re just here to fuck with me an’ I’ll get exorpolicists in to sort you out if you don’t leave me the hell alone.”

 **The creation of a contract like mine leaves traces, even after years.  Would you then be averse to visiting her house to search for signs of the summoning?** Rozalon inquires, watching his knuckles tighten for a fraction of a second.

“‘Course I’d have an aversion to that,” he growls, his eyes still on hers but blinking rapidly now.  “She was my best friend an’ she’s fuckin’  _dead_  an’ she wouldn’t do this to me.”

**She specified the contract would affect whoever killed her, if indeed she was murdered.**

“I don’t believe this,” he mumbles, running a hand through black, coiffed hair that isn’t quite as sleek as it was before he spent five hours snuffing out greensprites.  “I don’t…”

**You have to believe it.  This is your reality now.**

“It’s a goddamn figure of speech and I  _didn’t kill her_ , stop sayin’ I did!”

 **No,** says Rozalon, trying to put the finality of a funeral bell into the syllable.  It...doesn’t quite work as well as she’d hoped.  

“Wow, real eloquent comeback there.”

Rozalon has never been the most patient denizen of the Beyond, but usually that isn’t actually a  _problem_.  Her talent for inspiring terror usually allows for a confession within a couple of days, a week at most.   _Usually_ , her victims don’t engage her in conversation.  Something hot and indignant flares into existence in the space behind her eyes.

 **Look at it this way: even I can feel regret,** she snaps, black streaks crawling around her trailing skirts.   **And**   **I** ** _know_** **you killed her.  Unless your humanity is purely a facade, you will**   **bend to my will--my** ** _client’s_** **will--one day soon.**

It’s this, this simple expression of doubt in his ability to feel remorse, that makes him flinch and glare, wide-eyed with fear like the simple animal he is at his core.

And then it’s gone and he just snorts--a little shakily, maybe, but with all the cool contempt he’s been feigning since yesterday--and turns his back on her.

But that doesn’t matter any more.  She’s seen the crack in him...she can widen it.  He has to break some day.

Rozalon has become accustomed to this inevitability in her millennia of haunting.  He’s pale, thinner by the day.  Sometimes, when he falls into uneasy sleep she stands, unseen, over him and he whispers the name in his sleep:  _Fef.  Feferi._ He hasn’t confessed consciously yet but it’s only a matter of time.

She’s seen him drive his nails against his cheekbones until they leave tiny, perfect crescents in his skin.  She’s seen him stagger, sleek with water, out of the shower and empty his bile sac into the toilet.  When she presses him on it, he says only that he’s sick--” _somethin’ you demonic types wouldn’t know much about”_.

 **The sickness didn’t start in your body,** she tells him.   **It’s in your mind.  I can see it twisted up in the black strands of your guilt.**

“Fuck off,” he groans. He hasn’t searched for a demon extermination job on the database for days.  There is no money, and therefore nothing to buy food with.  The canned food is running out and every day a woman (taller and perhaps older than Eridan) comes to the door demanding payment for the use of her building.  She has shiny red boots, long black hair, a hat with a feather in the band, and absolutely no patience for excuses.  Rozalon takes some small enjoyment in her harangues, and usually lets herself fade into Eridan’s field of vision so that he knows he has an audience.

One day, after just such a visit, Rozalon watches Eridan stagger away from the door of his apartment and towards the kitchen, massaging his eyelids with thumb and forefinger.  His steps are heavy, his arms swinging at his sides.  Even breathing seems too much trouble for him; each inhale is labored, each exhale a heavy release.

He’s close to surrender.

 **You haven’t gone outside for two weeks,** she tells him.

“Yeah, an’ only you for company, it’s been a real pleasure.  God, you’re so  _annoyin’_.”

 **Not God,** she says, and--is that...smugness?  Smugness is so  _human_.  Surely he hasn’t been an influence on her.   _Surely_.  There’s that little twist of annoyance somewhere within her skull again, and that too is so human and mundane and gratingly petty.  

Rozalon spares Eridan a casual glance, wondering if he noticed.  He’s sitting at the table, one hand moving a spoon in listless circles inside the cracked brown mug on the table in front of him, clinking against its sides.  The coffee it holds stopped steaming half an hour ago.

“...What happens to us after we die?  Us puny mortals, I mean.  Do we go live in tentacle hell with the likes a you?”

Rozalon considers this, oddly peeved by his casual description of her home dimension.  Perhaps it isn’t the most glamorous plane of reality, but it’s not as though he has any context to make such judgments from.   **...For the most part, no,** she says, truthfully enough.   **And the humans who do arrive there cannot easily endure it.  As for other options, all I know is that the humans who die thinking of someone or something will find themselves spending their afterlives with the focus of their final thoughts.**

Eridan pales, an impressive feat given how wan he is already with fatigue and stress.  “So...ghosts are real, is what you’re sayin’.  Are you sayin’ that?”

 **It shouldn’t be that hard to believe,** says Rozalon loftily.   **But essentially, yes.  Although the thought must be associated with some powerful, nigh overwhelming emotion.  Hatred is the most common, in my experience.**

“I s’pose that’s how you ended up a tentacle-puppet, huh, Roz?  I’ll just bet you used to be human, but then somethin’ really fuckin’ awful happened to you an’ you turned into a gray-faced showboatin’ demon shrew.”

 **There is no facet of humanity to my existence,** she snaps, humanly.   **Only the semblance of it.  My true form is--what did you call me?**

“Roz.  ‘S a nickname,” he mutters, dropping his head slowly onto one arm.  The fingers of that hand slide back and forth, spreading and then folding over and over again.  How a murderer can be so pathetically despondent yet so unceasingly flippant in the face of a demonic emissary of vengeance is beyond Rozalon.

 **Man cannot live on coffee alone, and you haven’t even finished that,** she says.  No need to acknowledge the “nickname”. **Just know that if you starve yourself, your soul will still be mine.**

“Is that worse than what happens if I supposedly so-called ‘confess’?” asks Eridan, his voice dampened by the enclosure of his arm and the table.

 **That depends,** says Rozalon,  **on whether you want agency over your eternity or whether you want your helpless, stripped psyche to be cast into a plane of existence so thickly populated by dark gods that there is no space not occupied by tentacles.**

Eridan groans again, straightens up, and downs his coffee.  The skin under his eyes looks bruised and swollen, his cheekbones are hard angles in the dull noon light permeating the kitchen, and his hands are trembling, but he goes out to order a greasy dinner from a restaurant down the road.

Rozalon watches him eat, trying in vain to summon the cold, eternal patience that her kind are supposed to exhibit.  He, in his turn, glares defiantly at her over his plastic fork.

He only throws up a little of it.

Eridan Ampora’s life may be a limping wreck, and Rozalon may find his company more irritating with every passing day, but he takes small jobs and keeps down the takeout meals he buys, for the most part.  And he staunchly denies, over and over again, that he killed Feferi Peixes.

Rose thinks, from time to time, that she should have refrained from telling him about the tentacles.  She could have just...allowed him his death.

But what about pride?  She has a reputation; she draws confessions from killers and drives them to their deaths.  She is very, very good at it.  In great black writhing tomes of demonology, her name tops lists of demons suitable for dealing out retribution.  Her reliability is practically legendary.

Yet still Eridan Ampora resists...despite ongoing investigations of his so-called best friend’s death.

He talks to lawkeepers in their square, dull green uniforms.  They visit twice: a commanding officer, impossibly tall, with wild black hair and a touch of something almost demonic about him, and two state-sanctioned exorpolicists.  Their job, from what Rozalon can tell, is essentially the same as Eridan’s, but they’re licensed to use high-level magic to subdue or destroy more powerful dark creatures.

With this in mind, she dampens her perceivability as much as possible when they arrive, although at first she’s certain Eridan will try to alert the dark young woman and her pale, stoic partner to her presence.

He doesn’t.  While he tells them the strange almost-truth he’s repeated to her, his eyes never even twitch in her direction.  It would have been touching if it weren’t so confusing, and if Rozalon really understood the concept of feeling touched.  As it is, she’s simply preoccupied with trying to understand.  He would by no means be able to throw her off even with the assistance of professionals, but they would certainly be able to delay her.

Instead, he answers every question with weary, barely-maintained patience, starting with a demon hunt he went on a month ago.  “Fef convinced me to go out on a run like we were inclined to do in the old days, y’know, but of course she had t’bring her dumbass boyfriend along--”

“Mister Captor is still hospitalized and comatose,” says the pale one, lowering his spiky shades to stare coolly at Eridan.  “And we’re still not sure it was the Noir that knocked him out, do you understand?  If I were you, I would keep my personal shit out of this.”

His partner gives him a warning glance, then turns back to Eridan.  “Please continue, Mister Ampora!”

“...We were on the streets chasin’ a Noir until maybe seven, eight--”

“You said nine o’clock last time,” says the pale one.  The dark one sighs.

“Strider, at least let him finish his sentence before going straight for inconsistencies!”

“Can’t help it, Harley,” says the one called Strider.  He looks at Eridan the same way Rozalon does; she can see the same cold certainty in him.  Maybe this is why Eridan refuses to make eye contact with him when he keeps talking.

“...Around eight, anyway, it ran into a field on the edge of town and when it started comin’ back it was...different.”  He stops here and shudders, his eyes wide under the shadows of his brow.

Strider holds up a hand and speaks into the little recorder sitting on the middle of the table.  “Let the record reflect that the Noir in question had, between this time and the time of nine-fifteen, possessed Harley’s officially sanctioned exorpolicist familiar and gained its abilities.”

“Yeah,” Eridan mumbles, staring down at his hands with unfocused eyes.  There’s a pause, and then Harley clears her throat, bringing Eridan back to himself like the flip of a switch.

“We saw what it did to the the ones that got in its way,” he says, almost toneless except for the smallest crack in his voice on the final word.  “So a course we ran.  But it had the fuckin’ god-dog’s nose an’ there was no way we could run fast enough to get to help before it slaughtered us.  It cornered us in that backstreet, knocked out Sol...killed Fef...an’ it was comin’ for me when you two turned up.”

“Confirmed,” Strider adds into the recorder.  “The Noir was exhibiting aggressive behavior towards Mister Ampora when ops Strider and Harley arrived and neutralized the situation.”

And that’s essentially where Eridan’s part in the story end.  They ask him a few more questions, trying to get a clearer picture, comparing his answers with previous interrogations, and then they’re finished.

After they leave, Eridan is quiet for a very long time.  The next day, he’s still eating and he doesn’t look as sick, but there’s a strange expression on his face.  Thinking carefully back, Rozalon decides she has never seen this exact look in the weeks she’s spent with him.  It’s hard to categorize, despite her expanding knowledge of human emotive techniques.  It’s almost sad, but somehow both harder and more...distant.

Wondering about it preoccupies her for hours on end that day--hours that should likely have been spent trying to break his spirit and draw a confession from him.  He goes to bed early and sleeps well and for all the malicious delight she might have garnered from awakening him with cold fear in the early hours, Rozalon simply watches.

He is, after all, much more responsive to antagonism when he’s well-rested.

They spend the morning bickering idly--nothing out of the ordinary.  But Eridan doesn’t look for a new job today, despite seeming more stable than he has for days.  When Rozalon comments on this, he rolls his eyes and says, “I can’t get a day off from  _you_ but I can get a day off from stingy customers and playin’ target practice with a bunch a fuckin’ sprites.  An’ that’s what I’m doin’, not that it’s any a your business.”

The call comes late in the day.  Rozalon hardly notices that he’s answering the phone until he falls against the wall as though his knees have given out, muttering into the mouthpiece,  _“Yeah, thanks.  Good to know.”_

When he hangs up, his face is white.  He looks like a man facing death.

“Sol’s awake,” he says, more to himself than to Rozalon.  There’s a moment’s still pause, and she can practically feel his mind fighting itself.  Then he turns, slowly, and looks up at her.

“I have to take you there,” he says, and his thin face looks hard and afraid in the dim light.  “I have to know and I have...I have to show you before they come for me.  You gotta know what happened and I gotta know…”

But what he has to know he doesn’t appear to be able to say.  Instead, he slings the god-gun he uses for jobs over one shoulder and walks out the door--though not before taping a spelltag over the doorjamb.  Then, up the hallway.  Down the narrow staircase, turned a little to the side to give his feet more room.

It’s late enough that the streets are almost empty, though the buses are still running.  Eridan pauses by a stop but doesn’t seem to have the patience to wait for a ride.  Instead, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed straight ahead, he sets off again into the darkness.  Rozalon follows.  Above them, ragged shreds of cloud drift across the summer sky, tinted faintly orange by the city lights.

They’ve gone ten blocks when Eridan winces and yelps suddenly, hurriedly yanking his sleeve up to peer urgently at his right forearm.  There’s a symbol there, pulsing with purple light.  Rozalon recognizes it from the spelltag left on his apartment door, and gets her answer before she can ask.

“They already broke in,” Eridan snarls.  “Goddamn exos.”

And then he starts running, stopping only intermittently to gasp roughly for breath and glance over his shoulder.  But for all his paranoia, he doesn’t run like a man hunted.  There’s a dogged fixation to way he moves, a single-minded purpose.

Around them, the buildings become smaller, darker, derelict.  There are no cars, no people, only the sound of blacksprites scattering as they sense Rozalon approaching.

Eridan doesn’t stop at the sight of the yellow tape, and though his foot catches at it when he hurdles it, he manages to stay upright with a clumsy hop-skip.  Rozalon flows after him, observing their new surroundings with a slow swivel of her head.

It’s a small, dark alley, fire escapes looming above, thick tufts of yellow grass growing from the cracks in the asphalt underfoot.  Eridan collapses against a brick wall, with his head tilted back and eyes closed, taking quick, deep breaths.    She can see his pulse throbbing in his throat and sweat gleaming on his brow and the arch of his nose.  For some time, while he recovers his breath, the rhythm of his human body is the only sound in the alleyway.  Rozalon waits and wonders until finally he takes one last deep breath and lets his head fall forward.

“Is...is she...here?” he asks, not opening his eyes.  It takes Rozalon a moment to realize what he’s asking, then she looks slowly around, shifting the focus of her gaze to take in all seven dimensions of their surroundings.  There isn’t a trace anywhere.

 **...No,** she says.   **And even if she had hated you at the last, she would have gone with you everywhere.  She would not have stayed here.**

Eridan exhales, a cough and then a slow release of air as though it’s being forced out of him.  He drops to his knees in a series of little jerks, inhales with a tiny, horrible noise, then releases his breath again in a harsh stream of air.  Rozalon stares, speechless for a moment, oddly uncomfortable seeing her stubborn quarry so vulnerable.

**You seemed unfazed when I mentioned her death to you at first.  You denied committing the crime outright.**

“I--fuck, god--I told myself--I couldn’t’ve lived thinkin’ I’d really been responsible.  I got myself convinced it wasn’t my fault but it was, dammit, it was  _all my fault_ \--”

She could have taken him at that moment, at those very words.  It’s more than enough, and he’s been nothing but a thorn in her side for all these months, but something compels her to keep listening.  Maybe it’s a kind of respect, for the first human who wouldn’t tremble before her, who survived her company for weeks and made infuriating conversation and, by dint of sheer stubbornness, almost made her believe the contract had been incorrect.

Somehow, she feels she owes him her time for the full confession.

 **Tell me,** she says, and he does.

He tells her about crouching in this alley with Feferi Peixes and Sollux Captor, sweating in the summer evening, about the red sunlight and the fear and knowing he couldn’t bear to see the Noir kill her the way they’d seen him kill those other people.  Here he shudders, sobs, loses himself for a moment with tears and other human liquids dripping from his face onto the pavement.  He seems to be in the grips of the memory, lost to it.  But eventually he recovers himself, gasps growing into deeper breaths, scrubbing at his wet face with one sleeve, and continues--

“I had a plan…”

Make a contract.  That was the plan: a contract with the demon as the master, the human as the servant.  It’s demonologic lore, after all, that a demon won’t kill his pawns...most of the time.  It seemed like the only way to survive, in the cauldron of panic that was Eridan’s brain.  The only way for Feferi to survive.  As for Sollux, well--

“--god, I just thought,  _well of course he wouldn’t agree, he never had an education_ , he ain’t got the kind a knowledge I got, you know?”

But Feferi hadn’t agreed either, had argued, and Sollux had drawn a weapon on Eridan in his anger, and--

“--an’ when he was lyin’ against the wall, bleedin’ from the mouth, she turned to look at me an’ it’s not just that I was afraid, I was angry, it felt like  _her fault_ \--”

And he killed her.  

“...and...I’m sorry.”

He wonders aloud--was it because he blamed her for all of it since she’d coaxed him into coming with them, because she loved someone else more, because she was looking at him with so much  _anger_ \--

“--or just because...I didn’t want to see anyone else kill her?” he asks helplessly, staring fixedly at the ground.  His body, seemingly of its own accord, heaves and for a moment Rozalon thinks he’s about to throw up.  But it’s just a heavy, violent sob, hoarse and ugly, unaccompanied by tears.  The noise repeats once...twice...again, as he drops onto his side.

He’s still lying there, curled in on himself like burning paper, consumed by paralysing self-hatred, when the lawkeepers arrive.  They’re good; Rozalon almost doesn’t notice the footfalls until they’re within twenty feet of the alleyway.  And then, all of a sudden, they’re very loud indeed.

“Eridan Ampora, get on your feet and put your hands in the air!”

Rozalon fully expects Eridan to stay where he is, but he reacts almost immediately, rolling onto his hands and knees and letting his spine arch back until he’s kneeling, straight-backed, with a dozen weapons pointed at him.

And then he unshoulders his rifle.

Rozalon hadn’t stopped to wonder why he’d brought it; she’s grown used to seeing him pick it up as he goes out the door.

_“Yeah, you got it right, whatever Sol told you, he’s fuckin’ right!  I killed her!”_

It’s impossible to tell whether the voice is an act or whether he’s genuinely panicking.  Eridan raises the god-gun in disconcertingly steady arms, pointing it directly at the exorpolicists.  Rozalon, with her uncheatable vision, can tell his finger isn’t on the trigger, but it’s dark and he’s already cocked the gun and his hand is concealed under the barrel.

All they have to do is look at the glowing star of the rifle’s muzzle, his wild face, the burning eyes, his wide, screaming mouth...

Someone points their staff at him, and purple light spirals through the air, earthing itself in his chest.

And that’s it.  It’s done.

Rozalon watches his body slowly crumple to the ground, and hates him and hates him.  The coward.

She knows the sinking sensation in her abdomen has nothing to do with the way the dimensions sift through each other.  A confession and vocalized remorse...that was the deal.  That’s always the deal.  She usually draws her confession in a public place so that humans have some chance at dealing whatever justice they’re accustomed to.

She’s never seen a victim’s death firsthand.  Her head and chest feel hot; spines of blackness crawl over her shoulders, spiking up every time another wave of hitherto unprecedented fury passes through her.

She’s not sure how she wanted it to end, but it wasn’t like  _this_.

In her anger, she reaches out for the contract tag hanging closest her and tears it from its tether, crushing it in one hand.  And why not rid herself of all of them?  She doesn’t want to go back and there’s a savage pleasure in being able to physically destroy all her ties to the thrice-damned  _“human world”_.

But even with every colorful slip ripped away, it’s not enough.  And there is nothing else in the Beyond to vent her anger onto.  The horrorterrors are made of essentially the same stuff as her, completely impervious to whatever damage she can deal out, and she wants to  _damage_ something.  

She lashes out with both arms and great swathes of shadow streamers cut through the void, making wet ripping sounds.  She screams and the empty space screams back, tortured by the sound.  Pitch black needles fly from her, torn from the lightless fabric of her dress, and the sash around her waist twists and coils in an invisible wind, its color fading from its usual pink to a deep, ugly blood-red.  

 _Damn, Roz, an’ I thought_ I  _was one for dramatics,_ says a voice.   _Calm the fuck down, why don’t you?_

Rozalon freezes, her entire body going as still as only a non-living being’s can.  Only her dress is still in motion, skirts still rippling with the aftershocks of her anger.  After a moment, she lets her head spin around and sees…

 **...What the** ** _hell_** **,** she says, with feeling,  **are you doing** ** _here?_**

 _Concentrated on how much I hate you, witchy devil-hag,_ he says, preposterously smug.   _Looks like it worked, huh?_

 **Well I--** Rozalon purses her lips, then says, quietly,  **well, I hate you too.**

 _Probably helped a little,_ he says, aggravatingly dismissive, and looks around with a critical squint.   _...Mediocre decor you got here._

 **No worse than your previous living space,** she says haughtily, and finds herself unreasonably pleased to see the annoyance on his face.  He’s still carrying his gun, she notices.  It was as much a part of him as any weapon could be, as were his clothes.  Some humans are nude post-death, but Eridan would never tolerate such an indignity.  Of course.

Without either of them saying a word, they start walking aimlessly through the void.  Technically, there isn’t anything to walk on, but since Eridan seems to believe there is and it’s working for him, Rozalon decides not to point it out...yet.  Occasionally, questing tentacles slide back into their shadows at a glare from Rozalon.

 _So,_ says Eridan eventually, after several minutes of wet, empty silence,  _what do you lot do for fun around here?_

Rozalon considers this.   **I was not aware of the concept of fun or enjoyment before I visited your kind.  The other residents of this plane might have activities they find...fun, but I don’t think you would feel the same.**

He winces, another satisfactory reaction, and says hurriedly,  _Yeah, maybe let’s not try that.  What else?_

Rozalon stops and looks down at him, considering.  Then, slowly, she says,  **Sometimes...I move to one of the Deadly lands and hunt the Wrathful Angels.  They’re not very important, as angels go.**

Eridan brightens somewhat.   _Sounds good,_ he says.   _Can I get there?_

 **I think,** says Rozalon,  **that you go wherever I do.**

Around them, the world shifts.

**Author's Note:**

> For those who were wondering, Dirk and Jade's captain is the Grand Highblood (or Kurloz Makara, in this universe), and his landlady was Mindfang (Aranea).


End file.
